Greatest American novel is a subject that exists along side such topics
YouTube topics who the fastest guitarist is , or the fan boy delights of
slinging invective at each in the course of ruminating on the image of
Superman v The Hulk. The fun in all that is that it inspires everyone to
put on their Expert Pants and invent conditions, causes and criteria
for their favorite --guitarist, Super Hero, novel--and use them as
bludgeons against a legion of other equally engorged enthusiasts who, in
turn, have their individual favorite and wield rhetoric devices no less
bludgeoning.
Even Norman Mailer, who was honest enough to admit that he
actually wanted to write something called the Great American Novel
admitted , after decades of brilliant books, that such a thing, a single
entity,does not and cannot exist. The American Experience, or any
historically collected National Experience, is too complex and changing
too fast for one set of qualifications to set permanently. The greatest
American novel, I think, will only be decided, finally ,when we are
extinct and someone else , something else assumes the job of figuring
out who we were, what we did, and what of that is worth a damn thing.